Wednesday, April 24, 2002

One of the benefits here at UMC is our subsidized lunch program. The employees who work in Hsinchu can eat in the company cafeteria for only NT$25, so the kind folks in upper management have extended that same benefit to their Taipei employees. Since the company does not have its own cafeteria in Taipei, they order biandang (lunchboxes) from local vendors. Every day, I get my choice of about eleven options, equally divided between vegetarian and non-vegetarian meals. I enter my selection in a shared Excel spreadsheet every morning by 10:30a.m., and by noon, my lunch has been delivered to the office. I appreciate this program not only because the US$0.71 lunch fits into my poor cash flow budget, but also because the lunch options are written in Chinese characters. Every morning presents a learning opportunity and a guessing game. I am partial to the vegetarian option that comes with the fruit plate, because not only do I get a filling lunch entree, I also get a good amount and variety of cut up fruit.